Home > Blogs > David Bruce, Jr. > Real Estate SEO in Maryland

How To Leave A Google Places Review

By David Bruce, Jr.

Services for Real Estate Pros with Frederick Web Promotions

September 17, 2011 06:35 AM

How To Leave A Google Places Review Now That Google Changed The Process

Google Places Ranking Improved

by ApexPredator on 2010/05/05

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

How to leave a glowing review of the quality services provided by Gordon's Transportation LLC on Google:

Step one: you must have a gmail account AND a Google account. (it is possible to have one but not the other)
If you don’t already have a gmail account, please go here http://gmail.com and signup for one
it’s a good idea to list a secondary email that you use frequently to have the password sent to you should you forget it.

Step two: once signed in to gmail, click on Google account in the upper right corner of the page
Before Google changed the process it was easy: all you had to do was hunt for where it said: "write a review"... doing so took you here:

step three, please type in the following: airport transportation frederick md
that will take you here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1264&bih=533&q=airport+transportation+frederick+md

there will be 2 “yellowish colored” listings at the top (paid or sponsored listings)

The search results below them with the reddish tear drop are the local business listings

Google just changed the name of this service from “Google Local Business Listings” to “Google Places”

As of this post (Memorial Day Weekend 2011) Gordon's Transportation is currently in the #c position (or #3 in Google Places)

Google used to make it easy: There used to be a "write a review" button... Big G hid that in favor of something else, now there's 2 ways of looking at this: if Google made is "easy", too many people would abuse it, by making it harder... it's that much more valuable to you, the business owner. Cuts down on cheating, the harder it is, the more Google will "value" the review

Thank you very much for taking the time to jump through all these hoops!

Note to any business owner reading this post: If you cheat, Google WILL FIND OUT. You aren’t the first person to attempt to leave fake reviews. Google knows how many pieces of toilet paper you used to wipe your butt… any fake reviews will be “lost” when the algorithm discovers that the email address used for the review is owned by the business owner or if said fake review was published from the business owners IP address… every possible way to cheat the system has already been attempted and Google engineers have rewritten the code that runs the algorithm to screen out false reviews.

What happens if you do cheat?
Purgatory

Your listing will be degraded (not rank high) until the spam filter determines if those reviews are real or not.
You have no idea how many business owners call me to get their ranking back because they were overzealous in attempting to boost their own rankings. Frederick Web Promotions can pull your fat out of the fire with the Google Powers That Be

Google Places Consultant David Bruce Jr

Re-Blog

Featured

Comments(31)

Comment

Show All Comments Sort:

Carol Barron Cross

SUNFLOWER HOMES & EQUESTRIAN LLC - Palm City, FL

Sunflower Homes & Equestrian LLC

Thank you for that great information.

Sep 18, 2011 12:48 AM

Fernando Herboso - Associate Broker MD, & VA

Maxus Realty Group of Samson Properties - Clarksburg, MD

301-246-0001 Serving Maryland, DC and Northern VA

Great tips David, specially the one about the android pone in your last comment. .

Sep 18, 2011 01:34 AM

Cheryl Ritchie

RE/MAX Leading Edge www.GoldenResults.com - Huntingtown, MD

Southern Maryland 301-980-7566

This is neat. This will be a cool reblog this week, too. Thanks for the steps!

Sep 18, 2011 02:05 AM

Robert Hammerstein -

Christie's International Real Estate - Hillsdale, NJ

Bergen County NJ Real Estate

David - Great stuff here. We appreciate your expertise in this matter. I have seen many versions of my business in my hometown with different agents claiming our business site and having several versions of the same place on Google Places with different contact numbers and names associated to it. I have written to them about this but I don't think they have done anything about it yet... Seems strange that they wouldn't want to clear this up

Sep 18, 2011 03:44 AM

James Loftis

RealEstate911.com - West Palm Beach, FL

RealEstate911.com

Hello David,

Good information to know, thanks for taking the time to share with us.

Sep 18, 2011 05:01 AM

Christine Donovan

Donovan Blatt Realty - Costa Mesa, CA

Broker/Attorney 714-319-9751 DRE01267479 - Costa M

Thank you for showing how to get these reviews done. Now to get some clients to leave them for me.

Sep 18, 2011 07:19 AM

Jon Kolsky

Kolsky Realty & Management - Long Beach, CA

Licensed California Real Estate Broker

I am so glad I read this blog, I feel I have a way better understandingof Google place ranking.... Really cool for sharing, have a great day – Jon

Sep 18, 2011 01:43 PM

Dagny Eason

Dagny's Real Estate - Wilton, CT

Fairfield County CT, CDPE Homes For Sale and Condo

Thanks so much! That was so helpful, and Debbie's questions are always good.

Sep 19, 2011 01:34 AM

Lynda White

Bluegrass Homes & Farms Realty, Agent Know How - Louisville, KY

Admin. Mgr., Keller Williams Realty

Reviews are becoming more important all the time. I'm going to re-blog too. Congratulations on the feature post, David!

Sep 19, 2011 01:42 AM

Missy Caulk

Missy Caulk TEAM - Ann Arbor, MI

Savvy Realtor - Ann Arbor Real Estate

One thing to remember is that if you use your office as your address you will have issues, big ones.

My Google Places is a mess, with my reviews on another KW agents page. I have had no luck in changing it or getting help.

As he agents signs up with the same address you go down low on the totum pole.

Sep 19, 2011 02:12 AM

Tim Bradley

Contour Investment Properties - Jackson Hole, WY

Commercial Real Estate Expert in Jackson Hole, WY

Great info and very well written! Thanks for the help in understanding Google Reviews.

Tim

Sep 19, 2011 02:33 AM

Beverly Femia

BlueCoast Realty Corporation - Hampstead, NC

Broker Realtor Stager - Greater Wilmington, NC Are

Thank you for the road map!

Sep 19, 2011 02:37 AM

Tammy Cockrell

ERA Shields Real Estate - Colorado Springs, CO

I've always wondered how to do this. Thanks for the slides, because as they say, "a picture is worth..." you know the drill. Also, thanks for the levity; I laughed out loud at the comment about cheating & toilet paper. Classic!

Tammy

Sep 19, 2011 04:34 AM

Jim McCormack

Nashville Short Sale Specialist - Jim McCormack - Edge Advantage Realty, LLC - 615-796-6898 - Murfreesboro, TN

Nashville Short Sale REALTOR - Stop Foreclosure

Good information.

Sep 19, 2011 06:43 AM

Gene Riemenschneider

Home Point Real Estate - Brentwood, CA

Turning Houses into Homes

I cannot think this deeply right now. This is a great post and you are bookmarked.

Sep 19, 2011 01:27 PM

Evelyn Johnston

Friends & Neighbors Real Estate - Elkhart, IN

The People You Know, Like and Trust!

This sounds easy enough to actually do. I,m bookmarking and coming back...

Sep 20, 2011 02:21 PM

Allen Henderson

Henderson Real Estate - Scottsdale, AZ

www.scottsdaleisms.com

David Bruce: another great post from a true SEO master. Thank you for taking the time to enlighten us. I will be happy to leave a review for Gordeon's Transportation. Looking forward to more of your enlightening posts. Do you do consulting?

Sep 21, 2011 02:37 PM

David Bruce, Jr.

Frederick Web Promotions - Frederick, MD

Local SEO Apex Predator

Wow, lot's of comments:

thank you Carol, James, Christine, Jon, Evelyn, Gene, Beverly, Jim, Dagny,

Fernando, that Android tip will be the focus of my next blog post on my main blog Local SEO & Google Places Ranking, you're a nieghbor of mine, are you one of my subscribers?

Thank you in advance Cheryl for the ReBlog

Tim, I see you do commercial real estate... we need to talk plz

Missy, what you have going on is multiple citations from old business addresses, Google is confused because it found more than one of you and doesn't really know which one IS you.

Google works on trust: you know when you do a search and G replies that it searched 220 million pages in .23 seconds?

well it didn't REALLY search all 220 million, it keeps TRUSTED websites in a Cache (short term memory)

You're task is to get Google to trust you more than the competing G places listings it found

I can fix that for you... and by the way, if you have multiple offices, like 4 offices located at the opposite ends of one city... expect Google to be confused about that as well.

A large part of my consulting busines is from chain stores. the shop on the west end gets listed as the east end and so on.

Lisa and Robert, what you have going on is YOUR listing and the fake listings or listings made by agents in error (a LOT of breaking of the rules is inadvertent... no one wants to read a dry set of rules n regs, no one wants to read the fine print)

You need to get the veracity of YOUR version of those competing listings proven, how?

Google's ranking system is a mathematical equation, it's an algorithm... no amount of asking Google to fix this or adjust that is going to have any impact on what the algorithm sees.

it sees dupes... it doesn't really know what to do about those duplicate entries... so none of you get to rank

So you get MORE INFO stuffed into YOUR version... if all 4 of you have half filled out profiles... what's the machine gonna do about that? Give the algorithm what it is looking for, it can't really READ, it has "thresholds" of "criteria"... as of right now, the criteria it's looking for is not found on your version of those dupes

Sep 21, 2011 08:34 PM

Anna "Banana" Kruchten

Retired Broker/Owner - Phoenix, AZ

602-380-4886

Wow David....I'm catching up on older posts (neck deep in biz for many days). This is great info - had I seen it earlier I would have featured in BananaTude.

Sep 22, 2011 07:05 AM

Phil Hillerman

Crye-Leike Realtors® - Rogers, AR

Crye-Leike Realtors®

Good Morning David, Thanks for the information and I am glad I now know how to stay out of Google purgatory! Have a great day and a successful fall season.

Oct 06, 2011 02:13 AM